mouth. The time for internalising was over. All that mattered now was Christophe's desire and her ability to satisfy it.
A few feet away in the shadows, Xavion stood, listening to the voice from his ear-comm.
…there must be no actual penetration…
Xavion frowned. Pietre was determined to direct his pet technician's interaction with Wendee along a difficult path, despite the boy's obvious emotional instability. Christophe was rapidly becoming a security risk. And security was Xavion's prime directive, above the demands of 'the game'.
Wendee, too, was more complex and dangerous than he'd anticipated. She hadn't been subdued by the amount of violence Pietre would allow. And neither it appeared, could she be controlled by emotion. She'd wasted no time zeroing in on the boy's pathetic infatuation and appeared to be satisfying her own desires at his expense. Just as Pietre had predicted.
… and then give her to Josh for the rest of the day. Is that understood?
Xavion dragged his gaze from the sight of Wendee licking Christophe's belly, to signal acknowledgment to the hidden camera on the wall opposite him. 'Understood,' he mouthed, knowing the infra-red filter would relay his actions clearly despite the darkness of his position.
Christophe moaned softly and Xavion glanced back to find her taking the boy's penis into her mouth. 'Please… Wendee…' he choked. Xavion simply stared, surprised by the depth of feeling their stolen moment evoked in him.
Pietre, too, would be watching this and Xavion wondered if he would be experiencing the same stirring in his loins. Would he too imagine that soft mouth closing over him, those lips massaging his sensitive flesh with such succulent abandon?
Xavion's loin-cloth tightened and he reached down to adjust it, easing the pressure on his erection.
Pietre had given him no directive against this sort of sexual activity, only penetration. He could let them continue until the boy reached orgasm. Or he could stop them.
While he considered which action to take, Xavion observed the boy's response to her, his trembling as she ran her hands over his legs, over his hips and behind to cup his buttocks — her mouth constantly moving, her dark hair brushing his thighs.
Xavion felt himself grow painfully hard, remembering the way she'd sucked that mango, the juice trailing down her chest like fragrant orange semen.
Christophe was moaning, his eyes closed, lost in the ecstatic world of near-orgasm while Wendee cleverly prolonged the moment. Soon, Xavion knew, she would taste the boy's essence, as exotic and ambrosial as the sticky fluid he himself had licked from her chest.
All Christophe's dreams were about to come true…
Xavion's glanced away, towards the fire.
…or were they?
Was this what the boy wanted? The anonymous pleasure of a warm mouth? Wendee's mouth, as opposed to Josh's. No. Xavion suspected the boy had quite different emotional needs.
It was possible that Christophe would never be satisfied until he'd possessed her, until he'd lain between her thighs with the heart of his masculinity inside her and proven himself a man to her as the others had.
What if Pietre knew that, and his reason for denying Christophe the act of penetration was part of a plan, rather than a whim.
That would explain why Pietre had been annoyed at the twins for taking her while Christophe hadn't been present. He would have known it would torture the boy every time one of the others had her. Perhaps Pietre wanted him jealous. And letting him have her to himself for a whole day only to be frustrated by her lack of consciousness was refining torture into the realms of an art form.
To thwart the boy's desire so persistently was to risk it becoming an obsession.
Unless that was Pietre's intent?
Xavion glanced back at the camera.
Or Belle's…
His stomach churned at the thought. Was her subtle input involved in the scripting of this fantasy? His heart beat faster, his mouth going dry. If Belle was interested, there was a chance she might participate herself. She might even…
Xavion's eyes glazed as the incident he'd witnessed two months earlier came back to him full-blown, the entire episode retained in his memory with the vividness of an experience of intense shock — the apparent slowing of time, the minutiae of detail, the precision of each breath and movement — exactly as he imagined the last few seconds of life to be like.
Or the shattering beginning of a new one?
The day itself, however, had started ordinarily enough. The island's defence grid had alerted them to a ship inside their territorial waters and Xavion had taken the twins out to investigate. After establishing it to be nothing more sinister than an off-course fishing vessel, they'd laid explosives and were preparing to dispose of the crew when they were interrupted.
A small video camera attached to Xavion's chest recorded their actions, routinely transmitting the film into the security files for later reference. That day, however, on a whim, Pietre had re-routed the transmission to his control room and was viewing it live. He contacted Xavion and ordered one of the vessel's crew brought in.
Obediently, Xavion cut out the chosen one, an ugly lump of a man blubbering in an Irish brogue, whom he secured on the launch while the twins dispatched his crew-mates. Once ashore, Xavion followed his instructions, ensuring the terrified prisoner was cleansed before delivering him naked to a room in Pietre's underground castle Xavion had never entered before — a child's room.
As ordered, he'd waited with the victim in the centre of the room. For an hour. Then, when the repetition of the fisherman's pathetic prayers had all but worn Xavion's patience to its limit, she had appeared.
Both captor and captive had stood transfixed, watching the shy young girl approach. A dainty tinkling Xavion had recognised as Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' played faintly in the background, and in the air there drifted a powdery scent he could only describe as pink.
With an artifice Xavion could hardly believe possible, Belle had transformed herself from an adult woman into a pre-pubescent angel, complete with blonde curls, huge blue eyes and a teddy clutched under her arm.
It had definitely been Belle. Xavion had guarded her often enough on outings to the mainland to be sure of that, but the disguise had been so perfect, her size so precise for the play that the fisherman had thought himself confronted by a ten year old girl.
Her breasts had been strapped and hidden beneath a demure gingham frock, her nails were short and free of colour, and on her small feet she wore black, patent-leather shoes that made no sound as she approached. To Xavion, for that brief moment, she ceased being a woman, and became a child.
Which made his next reaction to her all the more inexplicable. A outflowing of emotion, like a blow to the head, dazed him, and his hold on the fisherman's arm slackened.
Part of him wanted step between them, to protect her, to kill anyone that so much as breathed on a single perfect curl. And yet with that was an equally fierce, almost blinding desire to take her himself, sexually, violently.
Gritting his teeth, he called on every discipline of his training to remain still — to obey his orders.
At a gesture from Belle, he released her victim's arm and stepped back a pace as she led the embarrassed fisherman to the small, lace-clad bed, seating him on its edge.
His hands still covered his genitals but with some coaxing and fluttering of eyelashes she managed to push them aside and crawl onto his lap. There, she rested her bright blonde curls on his chest and rocked back and forth, clutching the teddy.
Xavion watched, totally absorbed, as the coarse fisherman wrapped his arms gently around Belle and began rocking in her rhythm, his cheek against her silky hair, tears slipping out from under his closed eyelids.
The tender scene went on for some minutes before Xavion noticed Belle's comfort rocking had slowed to a tight grind, her tiny bottom massaging her victim's penis, with predictable results.
The fisherman's eyes opened, clouded with a combination of guilt and surprise.
Again Xavion felt the alien emotion surge inside himself. His hands balled into fists at his sides to keep them
